Rural Administration and Agricultural Development in Indonesia

N i969, THE GOVERNMENT of Indonesia launched a five-year plan with the I primary goal of attaining self-sufficiency in rice production by I974. Rice production is the first priority largely because Indonesia's population growth since I945 has outpaced the domestic production of food.' This is particularly true on the island of Java where chronic malnutrition and hunger afflict large segments of the population. An insufficient supply of food has compelled the government annually to expend substantial portions of its scarce foreign exchange to, purchase rice on the world market. Thus, the inauguration of the i969 five-year plan represented an effort to resolve this problem by increasing the productive capacity of the peasant sector to a level commensurate with public needs and demands. One issue of critical importance concerns the capacity of the government administrative structure effectively to undertake this effort. Indeed, President Soeharto himself has expressed his concern over the administrative execution of the five-year plan. At a full cabinet session in April i970, he instructed his ministers to take immediate steps to improve the efficiency of the bureaucracy in the implementation of the plan.2 The President had just returned from an incognito visit to West and Central Java where he had personally solicited peasant reactions to the government's current campaign to increase rice production. It soon became apparent from these conversations that the peasantry harbored some serious misgivings about this program and the manner in which it was being implemented.3 Thus, the President came to his cabinet convinced that definite administrative improvements would have to be made in the rice program. The issue of administra-